Member Of Garden Guild Sees The Fruits Of Her Labors

Living in a rural area has taught Esther Johnson to appreciate nature.

The 77-year-old Palos Park resident grew up on a farm in southern Iowa and developed an awareness of the plants and animals around her.

"You're certainly aware growing up in a rural area of nature, the trees and the birds," she says.

As she sits in her kitchen, which has a view of tall oak trees holding several bird feeders and birdhouses, one can see she hasn't lost her love of wildlife.

"I really like nature," she says. "I was always taken by the natural beauty of this area."

Johnson moved to Palos Park with her husband in 1958. Two years later, she joined the Palos Park Garden Guild One--today, she holds the group's longest membership. She served as president from 1989 to 1991.

She joined to get to know other women in the community, she says. At one time, the town had three garden guilds, and now it has two; Guild Two folded in 1975.

Guild One is a member of the Garden Club of Illinois, headquartered in Naperville. The guild was founded in 1950 with 20 members. It has the same number of members today.

The group meets the fourth Tuesday of each month, except for July and August, in members' homes.

Over the years, activities that Johnson has participated in have included co-sponsoring an Arbor Day program, holding a children's nature program, helping an environmental group raise money to purchase wetlands in Illinois and Florida, volunteering to plant trees and flowers in the village to help beautify the community and offering a high school student a conservation summer scholarship.

The scholarship is awarded each summer to a high school freshman. The student goes to Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and attends a conservation workshop. The workshops "are all about nature and conservation, and they take a canoe trip when they go down there," Johnson says. "They tell about their experiences (when they return) at the Garden Guild."

"We also take field trips and have workshops," Johnson says. Field trips have included the Chicago Botanical Garden, Glencoe; the Morton Arboretum, Lisle; and the Lilac Festival, Lombard. Workshops have included making Christmas bedside arrangements for patients in a Tinley Park nursing home and making spice rings.

One of the first projects she remembers working on was a 40-acre tract at 127th Street and La Grange Road in Palos Park that had been designated a wildflower preserve in 1960 by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. (The preserve is no longer there due to the widening of LaGrange Road.)

"We went out there and planted flowers and bushes, and we worked very hard," she says.

When guild founder Anna Fuhrberg died in 1989, Johnson and some of the other members decided to create a memorial.

"We planted a tree, a Washington Hawthorne, as a living memorial honoring Anna," she says. "It's down at the Palos (Park Public) Library."

Being a member has meant getting dirty fingers and keeping a watchful eye on areas that need constant maintenance, Johnson says. One such site is scheduled for a face lift this year.

"It's the intersection at 80th Avenue and Southwest Highway, about a mile from my house," Johnson says. "The guild had tried before to plant flowers there, but it takes a lot of care."

The group wasn't able to keep up with the work, so in 1990 it decided to use a professional green thumb to make the site beautiful.

"It was an eyesore," says Johnson, adding that it is a heavily traveled intersection. "We hired someone to do a natural theme, and then Garden Guild members (have) maintained it."

A handful of members worked on the project, member Sylvia Vlk says.

"Esther sort of spearheaded it," Vlk recalls. "She gets things done. She sees a project through. If she decides to do something, she gets it done."

Evergreens, purple cone flowers, day lilies and some natural grasses and stones became part of the landscape theme. But with last winter's conditions and salt from the streets, the site is ready for some heavy-duty maintenance.

"It needs a face lifting, and that's one of our goals for this year," Johnson says. The group plans to do some replanting using plants that can withstand the winter weather and salt.

Another project this year, Johnson says, will be the group's first "Walk in the Park" garden walk, a tour through six gardens belonging to village residents. The walk is scheduled for June 30.

She is most proud of projects that involved giving something to the community such as the benevolence project.

"It is a Christmas project, really," she says. In 1989, "we bought and wrapped gifts for children at the Crisis Center of South Suburbia" in Tinley Park. The group does a project for an agency each Christmas.

Since she joined the guild, Johnson has been collecting pictures and news clippings of the Garden Guild's accomplishments in a scrapbook.

On her property, Johnson enjoys planting a lot of shade flowers and planting and arranging potted plants neatly on her patio.